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Certainly working out will tighten your muscle and reduce its range of motion, especially if you are training on heavy weights and low reps. You should intermix your weight training with 15 min. bits of cardio exercises after each circuit to remove some of the latic acid buildup in your muscles from the weights. This will reduce the stiffness that you might experience otherwise. The Jack Downey books (i.e. Excelling in Badminton, and Getting Fit for Badminton) on badminton covers this quite a bit. Combine this with good stretching technique should keep you flexible, though you'll still be pretty tired for badminton if you are working out intensely, there's no way around that.

I've also been doing an extra 30-40 minutes on my exercise bike at 70% of my max heart rate after my badminton session when I can. Overtime I've found that this has increased my stamina when I play for long rallies, and back to back games. So instead of working out before, how about after?

Originally posted by teddy The easiest way to reduce this effect is to train after badminton playing.

depends on the training.
I don't think you should lift weights when you are tired. More so free weights than using machines. If you want to build muscle you should be doing low reps with heavy weights. Being tired increases the chances of injury. And it is harder to lift with correct form when tired.

Re: Effect of working out before badminton

Hi, Phil
I believe this only occurs when you stop for a certain amount of time and the muscles get rested before playing badminton. Prior to september, I used to work out for an hr, and then head rite downstairs to play badminton. In my case I was using heavy weights(which was 40lbs dumbbell press), and 3X10 reps (sometimes even going up 5 lbs after every set) When I start playing badminton it actually gave me too much power for barely even hitting the bird, making the bird fly out lots. All you gotta do in this case is to hit lighter and it'd be no problem.

Currently I weight lift everyday I do goto school (Every weekday except wednesday because I have no school wednesdays) I do maximum weight (that I can handle... which is 70lbs dumbbell press) and 3X3-5 reps for upper body, and low weight 3X maximum rep (usually around 40) for legs. I can easily survive 2 hrs of intense smashing/clearing drills, but I'm still working on the legs, which dies after about an hr of 6 corners running.

I'm trying to get maximum size for upper body and minimum size/maximum endurence for legs

Depending on what you want you may want to work out at different times (or change weight/rep ratio of when you lift)

Originally posted by Phil Today I worked out after school, and about 4 hours later I went to badminton. I couldn't produce any power, and my shots were quite inaccurate, and I felt so awkward and weak with my racquet.

I'm thinking that working out causes the muscles to stay tightened/damaged, so they can't relax which is what is needed for best performance in badminton. Does anyone know about this kind of thing?

Re: Re: Effect of working out before badminton

Actually I get the same effect after warming up with a game of racquetball. Just this one time though, I didn't play hard enough to weaken my baddy game. At the time, I felt my touch was gone or something... every overhead clear went out. Smashes and drives were harder, but netshots were completely shitty.

Originally posted by JChen99 When I start playing badminton it actually gave me too much power for barely even hitting the bird, making the bird fly out lots. All you gotta do in this case is to hit lighter and it'd be no problem.

Re: Re: Re: Effect of working out before badminton

That's because the muscles have been keeping up with the heavier squash racket, so when you switch over back to lighter badminton rackets, it will still stay in the form best suited for using the squash racket for some time

Originally posted by cappy75 Actually I get the same effect after warming up with a game of racquetball. Just this one time though, I didn't play hard enough to weaken my baddy game. At the time, I felt my touch was gone or something... every overhead clear went out. Smashes and drives were harder, but netshots were completely shitty.